Jay GW
Unregistered
J
Rape and Russian Policy in Chechnya
The case of Elsa Kungaeva is now quite well known. This is not because there was anything unusual in a Chechen woman being raped and murdered by a member of the Russian armed forces - a fairly commonplace, quotidian sort of event. What was unusual was that the murderer was brought to trial.
As the case was reported by Human Rights Watch, five days after her eighteenth birthday, on March 27, 2000 at one o'clock in the morning, Elsa Kungaeva was abducted by four soldiers from her parents' home in Chechnya, beaten, raped and then murdered.
It would be salutary for the Russian people to read more history. "Altogether at least 2 million German women are thought to have been raped, and a substantial minority, if not a majority, appear to have suffered multiple rape," Beevor states in his book.
It must be said again: the civilian population of Chechnya, being citizens of Russia, are entitled to the protections which any sovereign government owes to its people. Instead of protecting the civilian population, which was its duty by any norm of civilization, the armed forces sent there by Mr Putin bombarded Grozny and destroyed it so utterly that no building was left standing, and this was while there were large numbers of civilians in the city. Since it was carried out by a democratically elected government against its own people, this was a war crime without parallel in history.
Of course this is many more than the approximate figure of 100,000 citizens of Russia, in Chechnya, who have been killed by the armed forces sent there by presidents Yeltsin and Putin. But this statistic must be considered dubious. In the Independent there was reference to 200,000 Chechen civilians having been killed in the two wars to date.
In the Moscow Times the respected commentator Thomas de Waal also referred to Russia having killed 200,000 Chechen civilians. Earlier this month, at a seminar at the London School of Economics, the figure quoted was 250,000 lives lost. No doubt Mr Putin would prefer the 100,000 number as being the more accurate.
http://www.chechnya.nl/details.php?id=351&lang=eng
The case of Elsa Kungaeva is now quite well known. This is not because there was anything unusual in a Chechen woman being raped and murdered by a member of the Russian armed forces - a fairly commonplace, quotidian sort of event. What was unusual was that the murderer was brought to trial.
As the case was reported by Human Rights Watch, five days after her eighteenth birthday, on March 27, 2000 at one o'clock in the morning, Elsa Kungaeva was abducted by four soldiers from her parents' home in Chechnya, beaten, raped and then murdered.
It would be salutary for the Russian people to read more history. "Altogether at least 2 million German women are thought to have been raped, and a substantial minority, if not a majority, appear to have suffered multiple rape," Beevor states in his book.
It must be said again: the civilian population of Chechnya, being citizens of Russia, are entitled to the protections which any sovereign government owes to its people. Instead of protecting the civilian population, which was its duty by any norm of civilization, the armed forces sent there by Mr Putin bombarded Grozny and destroyed it so utterly that no building was left standing, and this was while there were large numbers of civilians in the city. Since it was carried out by a democratically elected government against its own people, this was a war crime without parallel in history.
Of course this is many more than the approximate figure of 100,000 citizens of Russia, in Chechnya, who have been killed by the armed forces sent there by presidents Yeltsin and Putin. But this statistic must be considered dubious. In the Independent there was reference to 200,000 Chechen civilians having been killed in the two wars to date.
In the Moscow Times the respected commentator Thomas de Waal also referred to Russia having killed 200,000 Chechen civilians. Earlier this month, at a seminar at the London School of Economics, the figure quoted was 250,000 lives lost. No doubt Mr Putin would prefer the 100,000 number as being the more accurate.
http://www.chechnya.nl/details.php?id=351&lang=eng
